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The further question, therefore, is raised whether
boundlessness and indetermination are things lodging in something
other than themselves as a sort of attribute and whether
Privation [or Negation of quality] is also an attribute residing
in some separate substratum.
Now all that is Number and Reason-Principle is outside of
boundlessness: these bestow bound and settlement and order in
general upon all else: neither anything that has been brought
under order nor any Order-Absolute is needed to bring them under
order. The thing that has to be brought under order [e.g.,
Matter] is other than the Ordering Principle which is Limit and
Definiteness and Reason-Principle. Therefore, necessarily, the
thing to be brought under order and to definiteness must be in
itself a thing lacking delimitation.
Now Matter is a thing that is brought under order- like all that
shares its nature by participation or by possessing the same
principle- therefore, necessarily, Matter is The Undelimited and
not merely the recipient of a nonessential quality of
Indefiniteness entering as an attribute.
For, first, any attribute to any subject must be a
Reason-Principle; and Indefiniteness is not a Reason-Principle.
Secondly, what must a thing be to take Indefiniteness as an
attribute? Obviously it must, beforehand, be either Definiteness
or a defined thing. But Matter is neither.
Then again Indefiniteness entering as an attribute into the
definite must cease to be indefinite: but Indefiniteness has not
entered as an attribute into Matter: that is, Matter is
essentially Indefiniteness.
The Matter even of the Intellectual Realm is the Indefinite, [the
undelimited]; it must be a thing generated by the undefined
nature, the illimitable nature, of the Eternal Being, The One
illimitableness, however, not possessing native existence There
but engendered by The One.
But how can Matter be common to both spheres, be here and be
There?
Because even Indefiniteness has two phases.
But what difference can there be between phase and phase of
Indefiniteness?
The difference of archetype and image.
So that Matter here [as only an image of Indefiniteness] would be
less indefinite?
On the contrary, more indefinite as an Image-thing remote from
true being. Indefiniteness is the greater in the less ordered
object; the less deep in good, the deeper in evil. The
Indeterminate in the Intellectual Realm, where there is truer
being, might almost be called merely an Image of Indefiniteness:
in this lower Sphere where there is less Being, where there is a
refusal of the Authentic, and an adoption of the Image-Kind,
Indefiniteness is more authentically indefinite.
But this argument seems to make no difference between the
indefinite object and Indefiniteness-essential. Is there none?
In any object in which Reason and Matter co-exist we distinguish
between Indeterminateness and the Indeterminate subject: but
where Matter stands alone we make them identical, or, better, we
would say right out that in that case essential Indeterminateness
is not present; for it is a Reason-Principle and could not lodge
in the indeterminate object without at once annulling the
indeterminateness.
Matter, then, must be described as Indefinite of itself, by its
natural opposition to Reason-Principle. Reason is Reason and
nothing else; just so Matter, opposed by its indeterminateness to
Reason, is Indeterminateness and nothing else.
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